Nothing is new

۞ People hold a so called modern view or argue about a host of things. For example people argue that when you die, everything ends, or that it does not matter if punishment or reward is meted out.

I would like to cite the philosophy of two philosophers :

1. Ajita Kesakambali, was an ancient Indian philosopher He preached a methodical materialist doctrine which said that good deeds and charity gained a man nothing in the end. His body dissolved into the primary elements at death, no matter what he had or had not done. Nothing remained. Good and evil, charity and compassion were all irrelevant to a man's fate." According to an early Buddhist source, Ajita Kesakambali argued that:

There is no such thing as alms or sacrifice or offering. There is neither fruit nor result of good or evil deeds...A human being is built up of four elements. When he dies the earthly in him returns and relaapses to the earth, the fluid to the water, the heat to the fire, the wind to the air, and his faculties pass into space. The four bearers, on the bier as a fifth, take his dead body away; till they reach the burning, ground men utter forth eulogies, but there his bones are bleached, and his offerings end in ashes. It is a doctrine of fools, this talk of gifts. It is an empty lie, mere idle talk, when men say there is profit herein. Fools and wise alike, on the dissolution of the body, are cut off, annihilated, and after death they are not.
In short – with death everything is annihilated

Ajita lived in the 6th century BC.(that’s about 2600 years back).


2. Another philosopher called Pūraṇa Kassapa who was an Indian abstemious teacher lived around the 5th or 4th c. BCE. He lived contemporarily with Mahavira and the Buddha.

It is accounted As an illustration of Purana's beliefs, in the Samannaphala Sutta that Purana had said:

"...[I] acting or getting others to act, in mutilating or getting others to mutilate, in torturing or getting others to torture, in inflicting sorrow or in getting others to inflict sorrow, in tormenting or getting others to torment, in intimidating or getting others to intimidate, in taking life, taking what is not given, breaking into houses, plundering wealth, committing burglary, ambushing highways, committing adultery, speaking falsehood — one does no evil. If with a razor-edged disk one were to turn all the living beings on this earth to a single heap of flesh, a single pile of flesh, there would be no evil from that cause, no coming of evil. Even if one were to go along the right bank of the Ganges, killing and getting others to kill, mutilating and getting others to mutilate, torturing and getting others to torture, there would be no evil from that cause, no coming of evil. Even if one were to go along the left bank of the Ganges, giving and getting others to give, making sacrifices and getting others to make sacrifices, there would be no merit from that cause, no coming of merit. Through generosity, self-control, restraint, and truthful speech there is no merit from that cause, no coming of merit.'

In short Purana believed that any reward or punishment for either good or bad deeds are denied.

To reiterate and corroborate my belief that there is nothing new in this world and that everything is all said and done a long time back, it is only that you were naïve, badly informed or ignorant, I stand vindicated

Hence to adopt a motto like “Quest never ends” might paradoxically make us more intelligent and humble.

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